Event organizers often try to incorporate the audience into the event, for example, a concert, television show, sporting event. By engaging the audience, the organizers give people a sense of participation, reinforcing the notion that the audience is important to the event. In many cases, the mood of the audience can determine the success of an event. Therefore, many event organizers devise methods to engage an audience to keep them happy and entertained.
At sporting events, organizers typically try to engage their audiences. For example, mascots interact with the audiences and influence them to cheer for a team. Video screens cue audiences to clap and make noise. To further reinforce the event, video footage of the excited and cheering audience is often displayed on the video screens.
Video systems can provide a mechanism for interacting with art. While video systems may be inexpensive, easy to install, and typically impose few physical constraints, a public space presents a complex environment for video analysis systems. For instance, the number of people seen by a camera can vary from none to many. For instance, there may be motion in the background. In addition, light and weather conditions may vary. The clothing worn by members of the public subject of the video system may also vary. It will be appreciated that for effective interaction, a video system needs to accommodate these factors.
Interaction becomes even more difficult when the art is viewed by groups of people, for example, spectators at a sports event watching a video display while interacting with and manipulating the display with their movement or other motion. In this example, an interaction based video system must address the public space factors (as described above) in addition to scene complexity which arises from the number of people interacting (e.g. providing motion inputs) and the number of people not interacting.
Audience motion and behaviour is complex, and accordingly, there still remains a need for improvements in the art.